by Tech Talk | Mar 15, 2023 | Articles
Microsoft has added 13 new African languages to its Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services Translator enabling text and documents to be translated to and from these languages across the entire Microsoft ecosystem of products and services.
Sesotho (Southern Sotho), Sesotho sa Leboa (Northern Sotho), Setswana (Tswana) and Xhosa are the latest of South Africa’s official language to be supported, following last year’s release of Zulu. The other languages are chiShona, Hausa, Igbo, Kinyarwanda, Lingala, Luganda, Nyanja, Rundi and Yoruba.
This brings the total number of supported languages to 124 and adds language support for millions of people in Africa and worldwide.
“This release highlights our mission to build meaningful cognitive products and services that improve accessibility and empower local communities,” says Lillian Barnard, CEO of Microsoft SA. “As the benefits and value of translation support become more evident, particularly for African languages, we will see it help break down language barriers and enable more people to connect with each other and technology in a way that empowers them to do and achieve more.”
Integrations across Microsoft’s ecosystem include Microsoft 365 for translating text and documents, the Microsoft Edge browser and Bing search engine for translating whole webpages, SwiftKey for translating messages, LinkedIn for translating user-submitted content, and the Translator app for having multilingual conversations on the move, among others.
Using Translator, people and organisations can add African languages’ text translation to apps, websites, workflows, and tools – or use Translator’s Document Translation feature to translate entire documents, or volumes of documents, in a variety of different file formats preserving their original formatting. They can also use Translator with Cognitive Services such as Speech or Computer Vision to add additional capabilities such as speech-to-text and image translation into their apps. Educators can create a more inclusive classroom for both students and parents with live captioning and cross-language understanding.
Translator aims to break the language barrier between people and cultures all over the world. To achieve this, Microsoft has continuously added languages and dialects to this service while ensuring the translation quality of the supported languages by using the latest neural machine translation (NMT) techniques.
“The addition of new African languages means that more people are able to connect and that language will become a seamless feature of using technology,” says Barnard.
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by Tech Talk | Feb 22, 2023 | Articles
Microsoft headed into a showdown with European Union antitrust watchdogs by insisting its US$69-billion (R1.3-trillion) takeover of Activision Blizzard will “bring more competition” for gamers but pledging to show willingness to address antitrust concerns.
“I think we’ll make clear that our acquisition of Activision Blizzard will bring more games to more people on more devices and platforms than ever before,” Microsoft president Brad Smith told reporters ahead a closed-door hearing in Brussels.
“We’re more than willing, given our strategy, to address the concerns that others have, whether it’s by contracts, like we did with Nintendo this morning, or whether it’s by regulatory undertakings, as we’ve consistently been open to addressing,” Smith said.
He was referring to the signing of a 10-year agreement with Nintendo that “will bring Call of Duty to Nintendo devices”. Microsoft last year already publicly offered to give other rival Sony Group a similar licence for the blockbuster game.
The EU hearing, with dozens of lawyers, officials and rivals, comes just two weeks after Britain’s merger regulator provisionally found that the deal could substantially harm competition in gaming consoles and cloud gaming services in the country. That raised questions about the viability of the transaction that’s also under attack in the US over fears Microsoft could make it harder for rival platforms to access Activision’s most popular titles.
Microsoft recently received the EU regulators’ initial findings in a so-called statement of objections, laying out the bloc’s key concerns about the deal, according to people familiar with the review.
In the UK, it’s clear already that licensing alone won’t be enough to convince its watchdog. The Competition and Markets Authority this month suggested a number of structural remedies that include the divestiture of the business associated with Call of Duty, the Activision part of the business or blocking the merger altogether.
In the EU, the SO and this week’s hearing, which also includes Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, will set the path for the kinds of formal remedies Microsoft will have to submit in the coming weeks. The EU aims to finalise its review by 11 April.
The UK probe, which has focused on whether the deal will allow Microsoft to foreclose on rival console gaming platforms and cloud gaming service providers, is set to conclude by 26 April. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission is locked in a lengthy legal process after formally suing to veto the transaction.
Microsoft has repeatedly said it has no plans to make Call of Duty exclusive. The software giant has offered to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for several years and a similar deal to Nintendo for its Switch console. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer maintains that the company’s plan is to seed its content across as many screens and systems as possible. — Bloomberg
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by Tech Talk | Nov 3, 2022 | Articles
Microsoft has now made Dynamics 365 and Power Platform generally available in its enterprise-grade data centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
The multiple hyperscale data centre locations within South Africa now provide Azure, Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform online services to support organisations as they reimagine ways of doing business to adapt to the rapid pace of change in today’s world.
“Leaders in organisations across industries and sectors are focused on finding ways to improve the flow of innovation and knowledge across the business in order to respond to market changes, customer needs and specific business and industry challenges at speed. They need digital solutions that break existing silos between data sources, people, processes, and insights,” says Karin Jones, director: business applications go-to-market at Microsoft South Africa.
The availability and extension of commercial cloud services through South Africa’s growing footprint of data centres – underpinned by an ongoing investment in Microsoft Business Applications – equips leaders with the portfolio of digital solutions they require to: cut costs, improve efficiencies, and drive business continuity and disaster recovery.
Providing flexible platform, productivity, business applications and the ability to rapidly store, analyse and action on data with intelligent software, the local Microsoft Cloud is able to create value at scale, fast and securely. It also allows people to connect with each other and business resources – data, documents, databases, networks, and systems – that they need from anywhere and at any time. This harnesses greater levels of collaboration, sharing, productivity, and learning.
Having these cloud services delivered from South Africa additionally means local companies can securely and reliably move their businesses to the cloud while maintaining data residency and sovereignty and meeting compliance and regulatory requirements.
Combined with the launch of Azure Availability Zones in 2021, they are further supported by the low latency, resiliency and high availability of business-critical applications and data that comes with in-region data centres – guaranteeing uptime and continuous access to critical data, applications, and workloads.
“Organisations in South Africa are increasingly recognising the value of the cloud, driving continued growth and adoption,” says Jones. The IDC State of Cybersecurity in South Africa report showed that nearly half (48%) of organisations in the country are using cloud as a platform and driver of digital innovation, and 61% of South African organisations said they were spending more on cloud solutions in 2021 than 2020. South Africa’s public cloud services market alone is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24,5% through 2025, up from $1,6-billion in 2021.
New services continue to open up opportunities. Integrating cloud-based services and products with industry-specific clouds – such as retail, manufacturing, healthcare, and financial services – can help extend the value and benefits of the cloud even further. Microsoft’s cloud portfolio includes these capabilities, solutions, and tools to help organisations transform – driven by Microsoft Business Applications and the capabilities of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform.
Microsoft Business Applications are integrated, purpose-built, adaptable business solutions that enable connected operations, help organisations manage specific business functions, build customer relationships, and rapidly create low-code solutions for unique needs.
Powered by Azure and sitting on top of the Power Platform layer is Dynamics 365, a set of pre-built applications that help companies optimise operations, empower cross-functional innovation, and better engage customers. Organisations can onboard users rapidly, deploy these applications quickly, customise them for their own workflows and processes, and provide ready-made business scenarios for business functions from marketing and sales to commerce, supply chain and customer support.
Power Platform is a low-code/no-code solution that allows anyone in the organisation, from business users to professional developers, to rapidly build, test and bring custom solutions that are tailored for their unique needs into production without having to involve scarce IT resources.
“This means businesses are able to adapt and respond to rapid developments in real time,” says Jones.
“Microsoft’s ongoing investment in local infrastructure and the expansion of cloud services in South Africa is helping build the capability and improve operational efficiencies of organisations of all sizes across sectors. This will accelerate digital innovation in the country by enabling businesses to become more agile, resilient, and competitive. This in turn will help unlock broader economic growth for South Africa,” says Jones.
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by Tech Talk | Sep 27, 2022 | Articles
Microsoft is expanding its partnership with the African Development Bank to support Africa’s youth entrepreneurs under the bank’s Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Banks (YEIB) Initiative.
Through its African Transformation Office (ATO), Microsoft will work with the bank to develop youth entrepreneurship ecosystems, creating jobs and dramatically scaling impact in Africa through digital inclusion.
Africa’s young population is expected to double in size by 2050, reaching 830-million. Though 10-million to 12-million youth join the continent’s workforce every year, just over 3-million jobs are created, meaning large numbers of people remain unemployed. Youth entrepreneurship will go a long way to solving the employment challenge, but lack of investment, affordable access to finance and quality business development services still present significant hurdles.
“We believe much can be done to help foster youth entrepreneurship by collaborating with the African Development Bank, driving greater economic inclusion for this key segment of the population and, ultimately, building a more prosperous society,” says the GM of Microsoft Africa Regional Cluster Wael Elkabbany. “Already we’ve seen considerable success partnering together on initiatives such as Coding for Employment, which set out to create over 9-million jobs and reach 32-million youth and women across Africa in just 10 years.”
The African Development Bank vice-president for Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialisation, Solomon Quaynor, says: “The strengthening of our partnership with Microsoft on the Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Banks (YEIB) is an important development in our journey towards harnessing Africa’s demographic dividend and facilitating the creation of millions of jobs for young Africans by 2025. The initiative places much-needed focus on youth entrepreneurship, which is key to achieving our ambitious employment targets.”
The partnership seeks to support the establishment of national-level institutions through a public-private collaboration model to scale up technical and financial support for youth entrepreneurs and build their capacity. The Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank is a unique value proposition set up by the African Development Bank that anchors and integrates efforts to develop entrepreneurship ecosystems in Africa. Through this initiative, the bank will bring together all relevant financial and non-financial parties and partners to play their respective roles in supporting youth entrepreneurs through mentorship, coaching, knowledge and experience sharing, and more.
Collaborating with both private sectors and partners, the Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank will establish a funding scheme, credit guarantee scheme, and technical assistance programs to strengthen providers of services to entrepreneurs. In terms of policy support, it will advocate to governments for the business-enabling environment reforms needed to catalyse youth entrepreneurship.
Microsoft will also leverage its partner ecosystem, which covers 54 countries across the continent, to action on key technology solutions across four key areas. These include skilling, connectivity, small-to-medium enterprise (SME) digitisation and endpoint devices:
Skilling
To connect youth to economic opportunity and employability skills, the partnership will provide them with career pathway and learning content. This includes the use of existing e-learning platforms such as Coding for Employment. The initiative also aims to build the capacity of Enterprise Services Organisations, benefitting youth through the training of trainers.
Connectivity
By leveraging successful connectivity solutions such as Microsoft Airband, the partnership will develop effective infrastructure models to help bridge the digital divide. At the same time, it will support other innovative solutions on the market either through direct or indirect investment.
Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) digitization
The partnership also aims to improve SME digital literacy and business skills by creating access to curated learning content, certifications, business solutions, business skills and specialised digital skills. This will be driven in partnership with LinkedIn and through skilling programs such as MS Learn and the Cloud Academy. Access to finance for digitally enabled SMEs will also be facilitated through Microsoft partnerships.
Endpoint devices
SME access to bundled endpoint solutions will be created by Microsoft and its partners. SMEs will also be able to purchase Microsoft technology at discounted prices. The partnership also forms an important part of Microsoft ATO’s mission to empower 10-million SMEs through access to skilling initiatives and investments, and to generate the capacity needed to scale and provide digital skills to 30-million Africans.
“We’re excited about the potential of this collaboration to magnify the work Microsoft is doing around digital inclusion in Africa. The digital economy plays an important part in giving rise to innovative new ventures that will create sustainable employment for young Africans. The more we can ensure budding young entrepreneurs are given every opportunity to participate in the digital economy, the closer we get to building a more prosperous future for everyone,” says Angela Kyerematen-Jimoh, strategic partnerships lead, Microsoft ATO.
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